Wisconsin’s Regional Extension Center Selects athenahealth as an EHR Value Vendor Partner
athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and patient communication services to medical groups, today announced that The Wisconsin Health Information Technology Extension Center (WHITEC), the federally designated Regional Extension Center serving the entire state of Wisconsin, has selected athenahealth as one of its valued EHR vendor partners.
By being selected, athenahealth will have the opportunity to work with WHITEC to position its cloud-based services to more than 1,000 providers across the state of Wisconsin. Providers looking to improve practice management and free up time for patient care will have the opportunity to purchase athenahealth’s cloud-based services at a discounted rate. As well, athenahealth ensures that physicians using their EHR service will collect their Meaningful Use checks through athenahealth’s unique bonus guarantee program.
WHITEC is one of 62 Regional Extension Centers around the country designated to offer health care providers a local resource for technical assistance, guidance and information on best practices to support and accelerate health care provider efforts to become meaningful users of EHR.
"We are pleased to include athenahealth as a WHITEC Value Vendor. The Value Vendor program assists health care professionals with efficient EHR selection by highlighting companies that have agreed to WHITEC's standards and values. We are committed to working collaboratively with these vendors,” said Jesi Wang, WHITEC Project Director.
Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth said, "With the first wave of providers now starting to receive their Meaningful Use dollars, it is critical that there be resources that help qualify EHR services in that pursuit. athenahealth is an advocate of RECs, the WHITEC, and any organization whose goal is to guide providers through what is a significant investment of their capital and change to their clinical workflow. athenahealth is able to remove the pain and complexity by uniquely operating our services in the cloud and is able to more easily direct providers in their compliance with meaningful use measures and assure they are fully aligned with evolving ‘Meaningful Use’ criteria.”
athenahealth offers a federal stimulus bonus payment guarantee program that assures its web-based services will help doctors across the nation, including those in Wisconsin, to meet EHR certification requirements for achieving Medicare "Meaningful Use” and to obtain the Year 1 program incentives offered by the HITECH Act. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) formally announced the final definition of Meaningful Use on July 13, 2010 and the program started on schedule on January 3, 2011. Physicians will have until June 30, 2012, to participate in athenahealth’s Medicare Meaningful Use guarantee program. athenaClinicals was certified as a Stage 1 ONC-ACTB 2011/2012 complete EHR for all 44 clinical quality measures. Please visit www.athenahealth.com/bonus to learn more about athenahealth's EHR and the federal stimulus bonus payment guarantee program.
About WHITEC
The Wisconsin Health Information Technology Extension Center (WHITEC) is the federally designated HIT Regional Extension Center for the state of Wisconsin. Created through the HITECH Act, a provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, WHITEC is the local presence for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. WHITEC is tasked with providing outreach, education, and technical assistance to primary care practices wanting to implement and achieve meaningful use of certified electronic health records.
WHITEC's long term goal is ensuring that all health care professionals practicing in Wisconsin are able to achieve meaningful use of electronic health records and improve health care quality and efficiency in their practices. Services are available to all health care professionals across the continuum of care practicing in Wisconsin, but federal subsidies are available to priority primary care providers to defray the cost of services.
About athenahealth
athenahealth, Inc. is a leading provider of cloud-based business services for physician practices. athenahealth’s service offerings are based on proprietary web-native practice management and electronic health record (EHR) software, a continuously updated payer knowledge-base, integrated back-office service operations, and automated and live patient communication services. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com or call (888) 652-8200.
This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the anticipated benefits and potential for meaningful use of athenahealth’s service offerings and the nature of prospective markets for those offerings. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. In particular, the risks and uncertainties include, among other things: the risk that our service offerings will not operate in the manner that we expect, due to design flaws, security breaches, or otherwise; potential interruptions or delays in our internet-based service offerings; our reliance upon third parties, such as computer hardware, software, data-hosting, and internet infrastructure providers, which reliance may result in failures or disruptions in our service offerings; errors or omissions included in our payer and clinical intelligence rules engine and database; and the evolving and complex government regulatory compliance environment in which we and our clients operate. Existing and prospective investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. athenahealth undertakes no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances, or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by athenahealth, please see the disclosure contained in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, available on the Investors section of our website at http://www.athenahealth.com and on the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov.
